Commodity Feminism in

Barbieland
Rosa Bargmann

For what reason, should the woman worker seek a union with the bourgeois
feminists? Who, in actual fact, would stand to gain in the event of such an
alliance? Certainly not the woman worker. She is her own saviour; her future
is in her own hands. The working woman guards her class interests and is not
126
deceived by great speeches about the “world all women share”. The working
woman must not and does not forget that while the aim of bourgeois women is
to secure their own welfare in the framework of a society antagonistic to us,
our aim is to build, in the place of the old, outdated world, a bright temple of
universal labour, comradely solidarity and joyful freedom.1

Alexandra Kollontai, The Social Basis of the Woman Question,

first published as a pamphlet in 1909.

The commercial success and pervasiveness with which Barbie has entered the cultural
zeitgeist is undeniable. As of October 2023, Barbie has made approximately $1.44
billion internationally, making it the highest grossing film of 2023. Additionally, it is
the highest grossing film by a female director ever, the highest grossing film ever
released by Warner Bros., and the 14th highest grossing film of all time. The film’s
impact on sales for Mattel has also surpassed the expectations of analysts, who
predicted a large increase in revenue after the release of this film/marketing campaign.

IRISH MARXIST REVIEW

According to their estimates, ‘Sales grew
9.3 percent to $1.92 billion, exceeding
projections of $1.84 billion, as shoppers
snapped up Barbie dolls and other
mainstays like Hot Wheels cars.’ Mattel
has devoted a new section of its online
merchandise store to products related to
the Barbie film where consumers (or
more likely their parents or guardians)
are able to purchase a wide array of
Barbie themed products, from dolls of
the main characters in different outfits to
the pink Corvette Convertible that Barbie
drives in the film. Much like in the
narrative of the film, Barbie has given
herself (and the brand she represents) a
complete make-over, she has seemingly
transcended her previous self, both in
aesthetics and in character. Indeed,
Barbie has come to be considered a
symbol of women’s liberation in popular
culture, from patriarchy and sometimes,
surprisingly, even from capitalism. It is
impossible to deny the impact of the
Barbie movie. But what does the film
really impart to the audience about the
condition of women in contemporary
society?
The world of Barbieland
In terms of its presentation, the world of
Barbieland is decidedly appealing with
its intricately manicured lawns, stylishly
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dressed inhabitants and vibrant shades of
colour, mostly ranging from bubble gum
to the hot pink typically associated with
the brand. The major characters also
frequently change their outfits to
facilitate the real world production of
new Barbie dolls immediately available
in your local store. Despite its glossy and
whimsical aesthetics, however, it
immediately becomes evident that Barbie
considers itself a work of political
fiction, and a progressive one at that.
Indeed, as prominent reactionary
commentator, Benjamin Shapiro, laments
in his YouTube video titled ‘Ben Shapiro
DESTROYS The Barbie Movie For 43
Minutes’, the word ‘patriarchy’ is uttered 127
a total of ten times during the film’s
runtime.
Greta Gerwig’s movie follows the
journey of Stereotypical Barbie (Margot
Robbie) from childlike and innocent
girlhood to what the film considers to be
mature womanhood. On her path, Barbie
encounters multiple challenges that are a
real part of women and girls’
socialisation process. As a real girl
would, Barbie experiences the changes
that puberty makes to a girl’s body as
well as to her mind. She becomes sad and
realizes her own mortality, suddenly
develops morning breath and cellulite,
 leading to a significant identity crisis that
provides the catalyst to the film’s main
narrative. To tackle these supposed flaws,
Barbie must leave Barbieland – with its
female dominated social roles and go to
the real world – a world that is ruled by
men, representative of modern society.
When she arrives, Barbie duly
experiences sexual harassment and
infantilisation by men, unrealistic
expectations towards women in terms of
looks and behaviour and is forced to
navigate a fundamentally misogynistic
world in which women are disadvantaged
simply for being women. There is even a
nod towards discrimination against
128 women in the corporate world when it is
stated that Mattel has only had one
female CEO in the history of the
company while the board of directors
depicted in the film consists entirely of
men. The film also touches on the fact
that the inventor of the original Barbie
doll, Ruth Handler (Rhea Perlman) who
also features in a brief cameo appearance,
was not historically credited for her work
and ideas.
The assertion that young girls can be
anything they dream of until they are
thwarted by systemic misogyny is a
clever idea, but the film does not
fundamentally address the reality that
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misogyny and gendered oppression are a
necessary byproduct of capitalism.
Misogyny cannot be analysed or even
abolished by itself, and the movie often
feeds into tired stereotypes. For example,
although the film addresses the fact that
Margot Robbie is a flawed casting choice
to make a point about the harm that lies
in dictating a very rigid idea of female
conventional attractiveness, they still cast
her in the leading role; while all of the
other variations, except Weird Barbie
(Kate McKinnon) would conventionally
be regarded as young and attractive -
even if the film makes it explicit that
older women should be considered
beautiful too. The film also relies on a
biological essentialist view of women
when genuinely progressive filmmakers
past and present have challenged the
rigidly fixed taxonomies of gender and
the reactionary political dangers inherent
in such reductionist conceptions of
womanhood. While Barbieland features a
wide variety of skin tones, body types
and professions - and even a Barbie
played by transgender actress Hari Nef-
Stereotypical Barbie only truly becomes
a woman when she proudly proclaims her
scheduled appointment with her
gynaecologist. Where adolescent
Stereotypical Barbie was once without
genitals, she has now, through the
process of coming into womanhood
acquired a vagina. The unfortunate
implication lingers that one is required to
have a vagina to be a woman. This
reduction to genitalia as the all-important
marker of womanhood appears flimsy at
best, misogynistic at worst.
Commodity Feminism
From the outset, the various Barbies’
matriarchal domination over the various
Kens (in Barbieland), as well as the
individuality of each Barbie is dependent
on their consumer behaviour, their
appearance, as well as their chosen
profession. Stereotypical Barbie is
principally distinguished from the other
Barbies by her wide selection of
particularly feminine clothing, her
luxurious pink Dreamhouse complete
with a waterslide and her pink Corvette
Convertible. She is thus fundamentally
defined by what she owns rather than
who she is. Indeed, whenever Barbie hits
a major turning point in her narrative arc,
an outfit change immediately seems to
follow as the most visible sign of the
shift in the story. This phenomenon is
characterised aptly in the concept of
commodity feminism identified by
Robert Goldman, Deborah Heath and
Sharon L. Smith, who argue that “rather
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than fight the legitimacy of feminist
discourse, advertisers have attempted to
turn aspects of that discourse into
semiotic markers that can be attached to
commodity brand names.2 Thus, the idea
of feminism™, newly attached to the
Barbie brand, can be moulded into a
symbol of feminism, even if the brand
had previously only been associated by
the general public with little girls playing
dress up.
One way the movie achieves this is to
turn their own corporate desire for brand
diversification into a sense of the
possibilities available to women. We are
introduced to Lawyer Barbie (Sharon 129
Rooney), Physicist Barbie (Emma
Mackey), Writer Barbie (Alexandra
Shipp), Doctor Barbie (Hari Nef) and, of
course, President Barbie (Issa Rae) to
name only a few. The implication is that
young girls can be whoever they choose,
while the audience are encouraged to buy
into this form of commodity feminism by
buying as many different Barbies as
possible for their daughters. The idea that
Barbie equals a commitment to feminism
was also strengthened by the
conservative backlash, which ironically
made the brand appear as a disruptive
symbol of opposition to the right’s
rejection of supposedly feminist media.
 But this is to neglect the film’s biggest
weakness – its simplistic, but also flawed
sense of what women’s liberation
actually entails.
A flawed conception of liberation
Barbie fails to establish a legitimate road
to liberation for two related reasons.
Firstly, the film implies that women need
only realise their oppression to liberate
themselves as if a lack of consciousness
is the primary limiting factor, not the
overthrow of oppressive social structures.
Secondly, it assumes that malicious and
sexist men are the problem rather than
capitalist social structures that exploit the
130 rest of humanity and fuel gendered
oppression. Ken initially plays second
fiddle in Barbieland reflecting the
attitude of young girls to their Ken dolls.
But having escaped to the real world and
realised the power that men hold there;
he returns to transform Barbieland into
its misogynistic equivalent. Two points
are worth noting as Ken sets about taking
over Barbieland. The first is that the
Barbies are depicted as gullibly simple,
as it is merely by telling them that they
are inferior that the Kens usher in their
n e w r u l e o v e r t h e m . S e c o n d l y,
Stereotypical Barbie’s state of being
depends so much on her possessions that
she only really becomes aware of her
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new subjugated role when Stereotypical
Ken takes away her Dreamhouse and
throws out her clothes and shoes.
When this happens, a minority of
enlightened Barbies band together in a
ritual to magically educate all of the
other brainwashed Barbies out of their
state of subjugation. Once they have
learned who their enemy is, they pit the
Kens against each other as romantic
rivals to distract them from a democratic
vote to restore Barbieland to its previous
matriarchal system of governance - with
the previously noted President Barbie
back at the top of the hierarchy.
Liberation from oppression is thus
merely one critical thought and one
referendum away from being realised for
all women. Once the Barbies have been
restored to their original positions of
power, moreover, patriarchy ceases to
exist – but in its place is the original
system of hierarchy and subordination as
the men and the women merely change
places.
Genuine liberation for women means
liberation for all from systems of
oppression, including those rooted in
gender, not merely the replacement of
men at the top of an unjust hierarchy.
As Kollontai writes,
[Proletarian women] do not see men
as the enemy and the oppressor; on
the contrary, they think of men as
their comrades, who share with them
the drudgery of the daily round and
fight with them for a better future.
The woman and her male comrade
are enslaved by the same social
conditions; the same hated chains of
capitalism that oppress their will and
deprive them of the joys and charms
of life.3
It must be a collective project to liberate
all from systems of gendered oppression.
Any movement that does not recognize
this fact is doomed to failure. Women’s
liberation is not simply a question of
false consciousness and cannot be voted
in over the heads of individual men.
Neither is it a question of appointing
female instead of male CEOs, presidents,
or judges. Ultimately it is the
undemocratic system of bourgeois class
rule mediated through the capitalist
economy and occasional elections, that
keeps women in their subjugated
position, not the individual Kens of this
world. Since capitalism cannot function
without the unpaid and unappreciated
reproductive labour of women, especially
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women of colour and women from the
Global South, the subjugation of women
is a prerequisite for the maintenance and
preservation of the capitalist system. As
Nancy Fraser aptly puts it in an interview
for the New York Times: ‘feminism is not
simply a matter of getting a smattering of
individual women into positions of
power and privilege within existing
social hierarchies. It is rather about
overcoming those hierarchies. This
requires challenging the structural
sources of gender domination in
capitalist society[...]’4 Unfortunately,
none of this is possible, let alone visible
in a movie created by a capitalist firm to
sell more dolls through a clever story and 131
the weaponisation of nostalgia.
Conclusion
Though sporadically touching on relevant
contemporary issues of gendered
oppression, Barbieland remains
steadfastly removed from the world of
real working women and thus remains
what it purports to be - a fantasy. In the
end, the film is a product of the culture
industry in capitalism,5 and thus cannot
transcend the conditions under which it
was produced: a system built to
maximise the profitability of art,
meticulously constructed to be just
progressive enough to appeal to a
 mainstream audience largely consisting
of young women and girls, whilst never
fundamentally challenging the system
under which these people are oppressed.

One positive effect of the film’s release

has been that basic questions of feminism
have once again broken into popular
discourse. It is simple enough for
teenagers to understand its messaging
and provides an easily understandable, if
flawed idea of patriarchy. In the end
however, it is weighed down by its
bourgeois feminist approach to women’s
liberation and its commercial mandate to
popularise Matell’s key merchandise.
132 Ideally, the film will provide a new
generation of young women with a
starting point in progressive education; a
lens into the conditions under which
women live and a steppingstone to a
solution that rises above that offered in
the film.

IRISH MARXIST REVIEW

Endnotes
1 Alexandra Kollontai. 1980. Selected Wri+ngs, edited by Alix Holt, New York, W. W. Norton & Co.

2Robert Goldman, Deborah Heath, and Sharon L. Smith. 1991. Commodity feminism. Cri+cal studies in
Mass Communica+on, Vol. 8 Nr. 3, pp 333-351.
3 Alexandra Kollontai. 1980. Selected Wri+ngs, edited by Alix Holt, New York, W. W. Norton & Co.

4 Gary GuNng and Nancy Fraser. 2015. A Feminism Where ‘Lean In’ Means Leaning On Others, New
York, New York Times Archive.
5 Theodor W. Adorno and Max Horkheimer. 2010. Dialek+k der Au@lärung: Philosophische Fragmente,
Frankfurt am Main, Fischer Verlag.

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